Geoff Dyer

I like Geoff Dyer's writing a lot and was delighted to hear this bit of advice from him recently. He's talking about his work as a writer and some at first glance essential things he's never been able to do in that work. He can't tell a story, so that makes novels tricky, he has an aversion to library research, he has no interest in conveying information, and so on. He lists these things, these inabilities, not as obstacles to writing but as ... I'm not sure what the opposite of an obstacle is in this context ... anyway, he offers the example of someone who is not particularly interested in overcoming weakness because he's noticed that ...

… if you put them together, then these feeblenesses, they can become, really a quite,  you know, a quite volatile, potent, even explosive mixture, if (and this if is very important) if you have the courage and resourcefulness to keep faith with them.